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Article Title: Venice Carnevale
Festival Name: Venice Carnevale
Festival Country: Italy
Festival Type(s): Carnival, Street Parade, Party
I went to Venice for two nights during Carnevale and stayed a week. The only reason I left was because it ended. I felt like a character in Ernest Hemmingway's "The Sun Also Rises", unable to decipher day from day or hour from hour.


Festival Name: Carnival of Venice
Festival Country: Italy
Festival Type(s): Carnival, Street Parade, Party
My Venetian friends had invited me to come to Venice for Carnevale, saying I could use a studio apartment kept for family and friends. This was an offer I couldn't refuse, so I arranged my schedule to be in Venice the last week of Carnevale.


Article Title: Festival of San Fermin
Festival Name: San Fermin
Festival Country: Spain
Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Traditional, Party
The Festival of San Fermin, first made famous outside of Spain by Ernest Hemingway in his novel 'The Sun Also Rises' (also known as 'Fiesta')


Festival Name: San Fermin - Running of the Bulls
Festival Country: Spain
Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Party, Sport - Bizarre
My stomach was churning, my palms sticky, my heart smashing at the inside of my ribcage. I put on a brave face. Strange to think that I'd paid to be here.


Festival Name: Quebec Winter Carnival
Festival Country: Canada
Festival Type(s): Winter, Carnival, Party
The dancing Bonhomie was my first introduction to the Quebec Winter Carnival, a blow out of fun, food and entertainment in the midst of the city's cold winter days. Held in the first part of February, it a fun way Quebecers outwit the harshness of winter, transforming the city into one massive outdoor party.


Festival Name: Quebec Carnaval - Carnaval de Quebec
Festival Country: Canada
Festival Type(s): Carnival, Street Parade, Party
I'm sitting in a small cafe just off the Place Royale in Old Quebec sipping delicious cafe au lait and munching on a flaky croissant as snowflakes settle gently on the gathered snow mounds outside the door. The sub-freezing air outside frosts the cafe window and the wind blows in crisp gusts. Giant icicles hang from the eaves of centuries-old buildings along the narrow street. It's February--Carnaval time in Quebec.


Festival Name: Oktoberfest
Festival Country: Germany
Festival Type(s): Beer, Party
Imagine six million liters of beer, enough to fill a small lake or pour a glass for every man, woman and child in Germany. Add a few thousand traditionally-clad, voluptuous Bavarian waitresses carrying up to 22 liters of beer at a time, the equivalent of 66 12-ounce bottles.


Festival Name: Notting Hill Carnival
Festival Country: England
Festival Type(s): Carnival, Street Parade, Party
But all that changes on the August bank holiday weekend as the Notting Hill Carnival - Europe's largest street party and second only in the world to Rio's Carnaval - swings and sways its way into W11.


Article Title: Love Parade
Festival Name: Love Parade
Festival Country: Germany
Festival Type(s): Music - Electronic, Party, Dance
Love Parade is the largest techno gathering in the world. The tradition started 10 years ago with a few hundred ravers and has grown to a million and a half people. That's right: 1.5 million people.


Article Title: Las Fallas de Valencia
Festival Name: Las Fallas
Festival Country: Spain
Festival Type(s): Street Parade, Party, Fireworks
I awoke to the sound of firecrackers or explosives at the very least. This was merely pre-Fallas, a warm-up for the enormous celebration yet to come. The fiesta was a week away, yet very much on the minds of every Valencian.


Article Title: Spain's Tomato Battle
Festival Name: La Tomatina
Festival Country: Spain
Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Party, Food
But contrary to all this evidence, La Tomatina, an annual, city-wide, tomato riot, remains an inexact science. One would think that after 63 - or is it 64? - years, the residents of Buņol, Valencia, Spain, would have their facts straight. Some say La Tomatina uses 150,000 tomatoes. Other claim the number is over 1 million.


Festival Name: La Tomatina
Festival Country: Spain
Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Party, Traditional
As history spells it out, what began in 1944 as a simple tomato fight between a group of friends in the town's main square - the Plaza del Pueblo - has turned into arguably the worlds largest food fight. Actually, there is very little to argue about.


Article Title: Hogmanay
Festival Name: Hogmanay
Festival Country: Scotland
Festival Type(s): New Year, Party
Hogmanay is the traditional Scottish New Year's Eve festival celebrated on December 31. It is a huge affair which often includes many celebrations and parties for which tickets are sold.


Festival Name: Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts
Festival Country: England
Festival Type(s): Music - Varied, Performing Art, Party
Glastonbury - the best known, most written about festival since Woodstock - may seem familiar even to those who haven't been there. Everyone's seen all those images of mud-larking. But it's well worth making the effort to actually attend a 21st century Glasto.


Festival Name: Glastonbury Festival
Festival Country: England
Festival Type(s): Music - Rock, Party, Music - World
I want to be buried in mud, rained on in the dance tent by human feces, surrounded by deliciously bizarre people, and maybe (hopefully) catch some of the world's best electronic music performers along the way.


Article Title: The Spirit of Carnaval
Festival Name: Carnaval
Festival Country: Brazil
Festival Type(s): Carnival, Street Parade, Party
Carnaval can be smelt and breathed in the air of Rio de Janeiro. Everywhere you look at Carnaval time you can see a Carnaval smile, you can hear a Carnaval samba beat and you can feel the Carnaval spirit.


Article Title: Ati-Atihan Festival
Festival Name: Ati-Atihan Festival
Festival Country: Philippines
Festival Type(s): Carnival, Street Parade, Party
The noise strikes you first. It's thick, heavy, relentless, a bone-rattling clamour that fills every available inch of airspace. It sounds like the march of a thousand jackbooted skeletons on their way to pay a visit on someone unpleasant, like the dentist or the taxman. Your brain takes it in as an all encompassing roar initially, but gradually the different rhythms and tempos become apparent. Over here an intricate staccato. Over there a dull thud. Right over there a mixture of the two but at twice the speed.


Article Title: Wife Carrying
Festival Name: Wife Carrying World Championships
Festival Country: Finland
Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Sport - Bizarre, Party
At the Wife Carrying World Championships held annually in Sonkajärvi, Finland, it's the husband who does the schlepping - the wife holds on for dear life - across a course that's over two-and-a-half football fields in length and punctuated with sand, hurdles, water obstacles, and gravel pits


Festival Name: Carnevale di Ivrea
Festival Country: Italy
Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Carnival, Party
Unlike La Tomatina, the ammunition at Italy's Carnevale di Ivrea's orange battle doesn't get squished before it is hurled in the streets. It may, however, become smushed after colliding with the helmets that keep faces from leaking their own natural juices.


Article Title: Shrovetide Football
Festival Name: Shrovetide Football
Festival Country: England
Festival Type(s): Sport - Bizarre, Bizarre, Party
Imagine an NFL football game. Now, round out that ball, lose the shoulder pads, and add a few hundred or even a thousand players to each team. Okay, now move the end zones three miles apart, and dam a river at the 50-yard line. Now you're ready for some Royal Shrovetide Football


Article Title: One Love Festival
Festival Name: One Love Festival
Festival Country: England
Festival Type(s): Music - Reggae, Party
One Love Festival celebrates the anniversary of Bob Marley's infamous 1978 One Love concert and offers you four days and nights of pure reggae love


Article Title: Bilbao's Big Week
Festival Name: Aste Nagusia Bilbao
Festival Country: Spain
Festival Type(s): Music - Traditional, Dance - Latin, Party
For ten days the city centre is full to bursting with people, young and old, enjoying a mix of traditional Basque music, dance and sports (anyone for a spot of stone-lifting or log-chopping?) and more modern spectacles, fuelled by regular helpings of food and wine from the many txosnas (large tents) that line the main streets.


Festival Name: Common Ridings - Hawick
Festival Country: Scotland
Festival Type(s): Traditional, National, Party
For centuries the Scottish border towns of Hawick, Jedburgh, Lauder and Selkirk have been keeping a watchful eye on their southern neighbours, the ever-so-meddlesome English. In years past these Common Ridings of the Scottish border were horseback patrols to ensure those southerners knew where their boundary ended and the Scottish frontier began.


Festival Name: Vappu
Festival Country: Finland
Festival Type(s): Traditional, Party, National
Finland's Carnival-style celebration of Vappu is one of Europe's best kept party secrets as hundreds of thousands take to the streets of Helsinki to usher in Spring


Festival Name: Cannes Film Festival
Festival Country: France
Festival Type(s): Film, Party
"Dom! Dom!" The crowd around me was going wild as a black car swept past. Through the tinted windows a woman smiled and waved directly to me. She looked vaguely familiar but I could not place her.


Festival Name: San Marcos National Fair
Festival Country: Mexico
Festival Type(s): Fair, Street Parade, Party
On a warm April morning as I strolled through the San Marcos Gardens in Aquascalientes, a vendor beckoned me to come over and have my fortune told by a supposedly clairvoyant canary. I had my doubts, but he assured me that my future was in the cards. It seemed the canary was to select a card from a deck of Tarot cards. As luck would have it, the bird foretold happiness. This was the only luck I was to have in the next few days, as I experienced the San Marcos National Fair, the fair of fairs, which consumes the industrial city of Aquascalientes, located at the very center of Mexico, from the second week of April to the first week of May each year. It's an occasion for superlatives-the oldest, most famous and largest fair in all of Mexico.


Article Title: Santa Claus Pub Crawl
Festival Name: Santa Claus Pub Crawl
Festival Country: Australia
Festival Type(s): Christmas, Party, Drink
The Santa Claus Pub Crawl takes place on the last working Friday before Christmas. There is only one requirement: each crawler must be dressed head to toe in full Santa suit. Leeway can be given for home jobs performed on the suits such as cutting off trousers to keep cool and wearing thongs instead of gumboots, but every man, woman and over tanned Nordic backpacker must be fully Santa-ed to join in.


Article Title: Midsummers in Sweden
Festival Name: Midsummer
Festival Country: Sweden
Festival Type(s): Traditional, Summer, Party
I've discovered that Scandinavian summers are different to those in Australia. For instance, they have a middle. The middle in this case being Midsummer, a festival celebrating the longest day of the year, which in this part of the world can be pretty much an entire day.


Festival Name: New Year in Russia
Festival Country: Russia
Festival Type(s): New Year, Party, Food and Drink
One of the first questions my Russian acquaintances ask me is, "Have you ever celebrated the New Year in Russia?" When I say I haven't, they always laugh. Until I've met the New Year Russian-style, they tell me, I have never really celebrated it at all. My attempts to tell them about the Times Square parties leave them unimpressed.


Article Title: Canada Day in London
Festival Name: Canada Day
Festival Country: England
Festival Type(s): National, Historical, Party
Canadians seldom get vocal about much. There are loads of us in London but we never make ourselves known like our fellow Aussie and Kiwi working holidaymakers. A big reason for that could be that we don't have many events in London to support, but when July 1st rolls around, Canadians flock to the Maple Leaf pub in Covent Garden to show their patriotism.


Article Title: Viva Mexico! Viva!
Festival Name: Fiestas Patrias - Independence Day in Mexico
Festival Country: Mexico
Festival Type(s): National, Historical, Party
It's September 15, but it looks more like Christmas on the Paseo de Reforma, all decked out in red, green and white banners and flags as Mexico City readies itself for Fiestas Patrias, Independence Day, the biggest fiesta of the year.


Festival Name: Veracruz Carnaval
Festival Country: Mexico
Festival Type(s): Carnival, Street Parade, Party
The air hangs heavy any time of year in Veracruz, Mexico's hot and sultry principal port city. But the hearts of Jarochos, as the people of the city are known, are light, for winter means Carnaval, the wildest pre-Lenten celebration north of Rio.


Article Title: Loves, Labours, Laos
Festival Name: Boat Racing Festival
Festival Country: Laos
Festival Type(s): National, Party
Every year, in the end of October, Luang Prabang is a town of celebration. They have a boat races on the river followed by a big party and dance. The day after that, the townspeople have a ceremonial feeding of the monks with offerings of food. Then, the following night, culminating and coinciding with the full moon, there's a lantern festival.


Festival Name: Full Moon Party
Festival Country: Thailand
Festival Type(s): Lunar, Party, Natural Phenomenon
"A Full Moon Party is not an event," he explains. "It's a happening. There are no controlling organizations, no Full Moon committees. Everybody knows, 'I'm going to the beach, I'm going to party.'"


Festival Name: Reggae on the River Festival
Festival Country: USA
Festival Type(s): Music - Reggae, Party
Hyped by some as the best Reggae and World Music Festival in the United States, we couldn't bear passing up the opportunity to hear tunes from countries such as Brazil, Chile, Cuba, England, Jamaica, the U.S., St. Lucia and Mexico.


Festival Name: Isle of Iona Festival
Festival Country: Scotland
Festival Type(s): Local, Party
Visitin' yer unsestors r ye?' The driver asked as I gratefully climbed into his clapped out old van. I ignored his mistaken questioning. A mistake caused by my red hair, a mistake I was hearing all the time in Scotland. 'Are you going as far as Tobermory?' I asked hopefully, by way of a response. I was going to the 'capital' of The Isle of Mull, the third largest island in the Scottish Hebrides.


Festival Name: Charleville Camel, Donkey and Yabbie Race Festival
Festival Country: Australia
Festival Type(s): Sport - Bizarre, Bizarre, Party
Whilst travelling through Central Queensland we heard of the upcoming Charleville Camel, Donkey and Yabbie Race Festival and felt we just had to be there. We made a dash to Charleville risking life and limb, travelling at night through the kangaroo infested outback.


Festival Name: Galway Races
Festival Country: Ireland
Festival Type(s): Sport - Equestrian, Party
Throughout Ireland people of all ages and occupations prepare for the Galway Races with a fervour that is almost religious in its intensity. Budgets are planned, holidays are arranged and business is scheduled to conform with the sacrosanct dates of the annual week-long festival.


Festival Name: Carnival
Festival Country: Argentina
Festival Type(s): Carnival, Street Parade, Party
As the jungle road wound its way from Salta, vegetation seemed more and more exhausted the higher we got, changing from moist greenery to brushy shrubs until only cacti survived around the commanding heights of the Andes cordillera. What was lost in flora was gained in colour, as a rocky rainbow of ochre, violet, grey, olive and amber replaced the green of the leaves.


Festival Name: Wurstfest
Festival Country: USA
Festival Type(s): Cultural, Multicultural, Party
Recently, while driving into New Braunsfels, Texas, I was impressed by the small-town charm of the locale. It is evident that the city-fathers have managed to maintain the original old-world, Germanic ambiance. Even before you enter the area, the billboards along IH 35 provide amusing reading-my all-time favorite: 'TACOS-GET STUFFED!'


Festival Name: Great Canadian Beer Festival
Festival Country: Canada
Festival Type(s): Beer, Party
Okay, I know lederhosen becomes you and slapping those ample red thighs keeps the accordion player in synch, but pull up a barrel and take a breather. It's time you and I talked about beer.


Article Title: Battle of the Oranges
Festival Name: Battle of the Oranges - Ivrea Carnival
Festival Country: Italy
Festival Type(s): Carnival, Bizarre, Party
That fight for liberty is recreated with the Battles of the Oranges, which substitute stones. Italy exceeds its production quota of oranges as agreed within the EEC (the European Economic Community) , so the excess needs to be destroyed (just to keep up the retail price). My co-citizens cooperate in the difficult path towards a unified Europe by helping to smash some oranges.


Festival Name: Abril Feria - April Fair
Festival Country: Spain
Festival Type(s): Traditional, Food and Wine, Party
The word 'Spain' invokes images of a most vibrant nation, Latin passion, proud bull-fighters, flamencos, and of course, of Carmen and Don Juan. Seville in the Andalusian region in southern Spain is the very embodiment of the Spanish character and spirit, and its cultural richness is best manifested by the annual week-long festival in this city during the last week of April -- Abril Feria, or April Fair.


Article Title: Carnival on Cozumel
Festival Name: Cozumel Carnival
Festival Country: Mexico
Festival Type(s): Carnival, Street Parade, Party
Cozumel is well known as one of the premier diving destinations in the world. But many do not know that Carnival Week on Cozumel is one of the most colorful and biggest celebrations in Mexico. It is a week of parades, dance, costumes, music and street carnivals.


Article Title: Carnival Time!
Festival Name: Carnival
Festival Country: United States Virgin Islands
Festival Type(s): Carnival, Street Parade, Party
It's Carnival Baby! That translates into a month long Hol-i-day for all people of St. Thomas. Carnival comes every April to this Virgin Island and with it are all the sights and sounds that comprise the Super Bowl of Caribbean Culture.


Festival Name: Great Alaska Beer and Barleywine Festival
Festival Country: USA
Festival Type(s): Beer, Party
There's no better place to get acquainted with new beer styles than at a beer festival. That's especially true of barleywine. The best showcase for the style, and one of the world's biggest, is The Great Alaska Beer and Barleywine Festival in downtown Anchorage.


Festival Name: Montreal Beer Festival
Festival Country: Canada
Festival Type(s): Beer, Party
For five years now, the Mondiale de la Bière in Montreal, Quebec, has proclaimed its mission: 'To restore beer to its rightful and noble place, by offering the general public the opportunity to taste beer from five continents, while encouraging responsible consumption.'


Festival Name: St. Patrick's Day
Festival Country: Ireland
Festival Type(s): Religious, Party, Food and Drink
All over the world, St. Patrick's Day is celebrated with elaborate parades; families tuck into the traditional dinner of corned beef and cabbage; and, in the pubs, the green beer flows swifter than the River Shannon. It's odd to think that just a short time ago, none of the most popular customs we often take for granted even existed.


Festival Name: Mazatlán Carnival
Festival Country: Mexico
Festival Type(s): Carnival, Street Parade, Party
Visitors and locals scream, sing, shout and dance amid confetti and ribbons. Bands of all kinds play the infectious rhythms of the State of Sinaloa. And the food-oh, the food-camarones (shrimp) prepared in every way possible, washed down with ice cold Pacifico beer, for it's Carnaval Time, Mazatlán's biggest pachanga (fiesta).

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